Another Beauty Attack: Rogier Bissière

I have what I like to call episodes of “Beauty Attack” on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis when I’m struck by the awesomeness of an artist’s work that I never stopped to contemplate before. Such an artists is the French “abstract expressionist” Rogier Bissière, a painter of the l’Art Informel abstract movement that evolved after World War II (1939–1945). And you might have guessed that it’s the rich colors in his work that most “attack” me.

Rogier Bissière (1888–1964 France), Red and Black, 1952. Oil and tempera on canvas, 42 7⁄16" x 26 11⁄16" (107.9 x 67.8 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. (MOMA-P1665bbars)

From 1946 to 1955, Bissière incorporated a predominance of egg tempera into his paintings, partly because of the shortage of art materials after the war. In works from these years, such as Red and Black and Red Bird on Black (below), Bissière abandoned Cubism in favor of ideograms that were inspired by paintings by Paul Klee (1879–1940). Bissière had suffered from glaucoma through the 1940s, and he had painted very little during that time. After an operation to correct the condition, his vision did not improve markedly, but his work abandoned, for the most part, any reference to figuration. He painted these total abstractions in brilliant color and a style that seems reflected in his stained-glass window designs of the later 1950s. These paintings were not too different from the Surrealism-inspired pictographs of American Abstract Expressionist Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974). The brilliant color surrounded by gestural black contour lines is also reminiscent of the paintings of Georges Rouault (1871–1958).

In post-World War II Paris, there was a rise in interest in abstraction among a group of artists that was not dogged by a philosophy or canon. This was in contrast to the pre-war styles of De Stijl, Constructivism, and Suprematism, which had dominated European aesthetic through the Bauhaus period (1919–1933). These artists sought pure abstraction that was spontaneous, intuitive, and guided by emotion. It coincided with the similar development of Abstract Expressionism at the same time in the United States.

A French critic gave the movement the name l'Art Informel (Formless Art), and yet another Tachisme, related to the verb tacher, which means "stain or drip. Tachisme referred specifically to the French version of "action painting." Like Abstract Expressionist painters of the same genre, these artists emphasized a lively surface, gestural brushwork, and generally automatist creation. The artists of l'Art Informel worked in various types of totally nonobjective abstraction.

Born in Villareale in Lot province of southwestern France, Bissière discovered a love of painting while a teenager. He applied to law school at the insistence of his parents. After abandoning law, he studied painting at the School of Fine Arts in Bordeaux, and then Paris, where he moved in 1910. He worked as an art critic while continuing to paint.

Devoting himself to painting after 1914, Bissière forged relationships with Cubists Juan Gris (1884–1920) and Georges Braque (1882–1963). From 1921 on, he was a key member of the School of Paris, developing a Cubist mode of expression from which figuration was rarely absent. This was a result of the influence of Pablo Picasso's (1881–1973) post-war classical phase. 

Bissière suspended painting during World War II for the most part, returning to exhibiting in 1947. In the late 1950s, he created stained-glass windows for churches in Switzerland. In 1960 he designed windows for the Cathedral of Metz, the first cathedral in France to welcome nonfigurative abstraction. Bissière's windows displayed the same geometric abstraction as his post-WW II nonfigurative paintings.

Rogier Bissière, Red Bird on Black, 1953. Oil and tempera on canvas, 39 15⁄16" x 19 9⁄16" (101.4 x 49.7 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. (MOMA-P1771bbars)

Correlations to Davis Programs: Explorations in Art 2E Kindergarten: 1.6, 1.8, 1.9, 1.10, 5.4; Explorations in Art 2E Grade 4: 6.7; A Community Connection 2E: p. 171; Experience Art: 6.2; The Visual Experience 4E: 4.1, 4.2; Discovering Drawing 3E: pp.114–115